Talk:Ronald Reagan

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This United States politics related article has been awarded BRONZE status for quality. It's getting there, but could be with improvement.

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[edit] Where's the "St."?

I thought he was canonized?~~ C®acker 16:13, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

I forgot, I'll fix it. Anyway, it's "ray guns", not cannon. humanbe in 17:02, 10 June 2007 (CDT)


Didn't he suffer from alzhiemers while in office, making him a massive liability to America? I suppose puppets are easier to control when they have no mind of their own.DSFARGEG 19:59, 22 December 2008 (EST)

Yes, and I think GW Bush is proof of that. Carptrash 20:34, 22 December 2008 (EST)

Anyone else think the conservative adoation of Reagan is about two steps away from becoming outright worship? Ebon 02:31, 12 February 2009 (EST)

Didn't we cover that pretty well? ħumanUser talk:Human 02:47, 12 February 2009 (EST)

[edit] Homophobia?

I've taken out the homophobia category after reading this, if anyone finds any counter-evidence we can thrash it out here. Totnesmartin (talk) 21:08, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

[edit] This Article

I think this article is pretty poor, and should lose the bronze brain. It's all snark and no content. If I knew nothing about Reagan's presidency, then after reading the first three sections, I'd still know nothing. By the end, I'd know he was considered a neo-conservative, that he was against abortion and gay rights, that his response to AIDS was very poor and that his wife was into the woo. I'd be up for editting it a lot, if people don't object here... or if anyone else wants to mess with it, go for it.. DalekEXTERMINATE 02:28, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Found

this. Any USian want to use it? 18:48, 9 February 2011 (UTC) SusanG Toast

None of those things are really a mystery to anyone who lived through the Reagan administration or studied actual histories of it. Alternate universe small gummint Reagan only exists in the minds of wingnuts and those with very selective memory. Kind of surprised they don't mention the massive S&L bailout, though. That was kind of a big deal too. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 19:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Hotair.com rebuts, point by point. Picon small.pngAcer Blue 21:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Hot Air is an appropriate name for that site. Like how they cite World Nut Daily as a source too. Usual stuff about "Democrats did it, they did all the spending!!!" even though the Democrats only controlled the House while Republicans controlled the Senate until near the end of Reagan's last term. So "the Congress (i.e., Dems) controlling the purse strings" is plainly horseshit. There's also this handy chart showing that the proposed budgets and spending were fairly close, with some cases of Congress overshooting the proposal and other cases of Reagan asking for more spending. I'll give them that the Osama thing is a bit of a stretch. Might as well have gone after an easier target like the administration's weapon sales to Saddam Hussein or their backing the military dictatorship in El Salvador.
Also, that part about SDI being an integral part of our defense system is a joke, right? (Hint: It's even listed under "Abandoned Military Projects" at Wiki. Basic fact check fail. Guess they "selectively forgot" that.)Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 22:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Jon Chait at TNR points out some of the problems with the current revisionism, ideologically speaking. The nut of his rebuttal:
The trouble with the conservative view of Reagan as internal dissident to the Reagan administration ... requires us to construct an alternate definition of "Reaganism" that is defined by diary entries and other expressions of Reagan's private thoughts, as opposed to the actual Reagan administration policies.--ADtalkModerator 00:29, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Reagan was a good president!

I may be a socialist liberal, but I think Reagan was a good president. He stopped the Cold War, he did what he thought was best for the people, not corporations. He had flaws, but he was good! Colbert|FanI win! 03:56, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

No. He did not "stop the Cold War." Are you being sarcastic here? Picon small.pngLiquid Blue 03:58, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
Okay. I guess not. *sigh* Read the article. Picon small.pngAcer Blue 04:07, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
Buh? Gorbachev ended the Cold War, not Reagan, and the bastard made the rich richer while undermining workers' rights at every turn. He did nothing for "the people"--except maybe the people on Wall Street.--Filby (talk) 01:17, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
And started a 30-year slippery slope to theocracy, the MIC, and economic collapse. Osaka Sun (talk) 05:06, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Colby is mercifully gone, and this was one of his less bizarre views. TyTy 11:40, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Won the Cold War. Why not mention that?

The Soveits enjoyed the 1970's. After the US pulled out of Vietnam in 1973 the Soveits got to walk all over the world and no one would stop them. They sponsored Wars of National Liberation all over sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Central America. They deployed SS-20 short range ballistic missles in Eastern Europe which could destroy every NATO capital in a matter of minutes. They surpassed the US in number of nuclear warheads in mid 70's and had new ICBMs like the SS-18 "Satan" which could carry 10 warheads. They threatened to invade Poland and DID invade Afghanistan. Nixon/Ford had a policy of detente and Carter had a policy of neo-isolationism. These policies failed and weakened the US.

Things changed when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. He doubled the defense budget and rebuilt the American military. Reagan began a massive re-armament based on high-technology that obsoleted a generation of Soviet weaponry. The defense upgrade would include a 600 ship Navy, new Army divisions, tanks, planes, and missiles including the development of the B2 Bomber, F22 Raptor, B-1 Lancer, MX Peacekeeper, M1 Abrams Tank, and Humvee. reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative which was never put into use but frightened the Soviets even further about US technology.

The Soviets saw all of this as a threat to be countered and increased military spending by 45% in 1984. The Soviet economy was only 1/5th the size of the US and could not handle these increases. They were spending 25-40% of GDP on the military while the US was only spending 6-8%. They were bankrupting themselves.

Reagan confronted the Communists in Central America, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa, and Central Asia. He deployed Pershing II missiles to Western Europe to counter the SS-20s and gave the Poles and Afghans moral and material support. Hundreds of Soviet aircraft and veichles were destroyed by Afghan freedom fighters using American weapons and CIA training.

Reagan also devised a plan to bankrupt the Soviets financially. He made an oil partnership with Saudi Arabia. The Soviet Union's hard currency came from a single source: its mineral wealth of oil and gas. He got the Saudis to triple oil production wgich cut prices by fifty percent. This was a crippling blow to the struggling Soviet economy.— Unsigned, by: 24.189.254.24 / talk / contribs

HE won the cold war? really???Pink mowse.pngGodot I hate sluts 02:56, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
[Citation needed] Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content<sup> 02:57, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
By the late 70s and early 80s the Soviet economy was already crumbling and stopped matching the US with military production (cite the 45% increase or its bullshit). That leaves your entire argument pretty much invalid.
And that same defence spending spike by Reagan (and Carter) helped cripple the US economy in itself 30 years later. Karma, eh? Osaka Sun (talk) 03:49, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
Huh? 1980s-era government deficits are not generally listed among the causes of the current recession. Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX 05:42, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
It started the trend, no Republican would ever balance the budget since. Osaka Sun (talk) 05:43, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Except for those late-1990s budgets. But what have the deficits to do with the economic downturn in the first place? Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX 05:46, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Don't start egging them on. Osaka Sun (talk) 05:49, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
I fail to follow. Where were government deficits mentioned there? Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX 06:00, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

"In late 1984, the Kremlin incorporated a 45 percent increase in military spending into its next five-year plan."

http://hnn.us/articles/2732.html

False. The US econmy is in the gutter because of an inflated housing bubble caused by Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, barney Fwank and Chris Dodd. — Unsigned, by: 24.189.254.24 / talk / contribs 2011-12-07T21:14:10

[1] Osaka Sun (talk) 05:15, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

reagan was the best. Moonshot926 (talk) 16:05, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Greatest president ever?

Maybe George Washington. I don't know. Moonshot926 (talk) 06:56, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] A question

If he's the least stingy of presidents after Dubya when it comes to government spending, is he really a fiscal conservative, or just a false idol, like his right-hand man and successor Papa "No new taxes" Dubya? 95.14.186.177 (talk)

[edit] AIDS Denialism

I know that it does get mentioned in one sentence. But I think that this ought to have its own section. Two things to look for, Data, and a confirmed source of what his Attorney General said about why they didn't address the problem earlier. This is paraphrase: "It was at the time seen as a homosexual disease, so the thought was that this was just people getting their just deserts." — Unsigned, by: 199.89.180.254 / talk / contribs

You can try and write said section, then.
Additionally: On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: SigButt.png on the toolbar above the edit panel. (You can indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line.) Thank you. Nullahnung (talk) 19:37, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

[edit] removed (and reverted) graphic

The removed graphic is wrong, but for its vertical axis scale/labelling. It's been a long time since US budges were less than $1 billion. The proposed alternate source? Not as credible ... albeit with the right number of digits to the left of the decimal. MarmotHead (talk) 15:47, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

[edit] Reagan Quotes

Reagan had a wonderful sense of humor, and some of his quotes are classic. But then this article is devoted entirely to just smearing and bad mouthing him; which is a shame, and also a huge turn-off. Here is just one of his many great quotes:

"One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it." Slings and Arrows (talk) 20:32, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

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